I’d like to move all my business away from Walmart, and their pharmacy is one service we use often.
While I know there are “lesser evils” than Shoppers, they are walking distance away, and that’s important to me.
Can anyone share their experience with Shoppers for their pharmacy, and even better would be from anyone who’s switched from Walmart Pharmacy to Shoppers.
Thanks in advance.
Stay away from Shoppers or any Loblaws pharmacy, I understand it is Canadian and has better hours than many locally owned pharmacies however I have heard many horror stories (I have had difficulties with them to) on the Reddit group r/loblawsisoutofcontrol. There is a group on lemmy under c/loblawsisoutofcontrol as well but it is much smaller and not as active.
I do get it. I’ve avoided shopping at Loblaws owned stores for years, but now I have to decide where to divert my money from an American company (Walmart) to a Canadian one.
I’ve got two choices for walkable pharmacies in my area (this is important), one is Shoppers, and the other is a small pharmacy that’s quite a bit less convenient to get to, but their hours suck, and that would make it far too much trouble to even get prescriptions.
Every other pharmacy that isn’t owned by Loblaws (or Walmart) is far too out of the way, so I have to pick an evil American corp or an evil Canadian one. ☹️ I’ll look into those horror stories, as it could be a deal-breaker. I’ve had issues with Walmart (i.e. showing up after they said the order is ready, and it was not), but then I’ve also read negative reviews from small pharmacies, too.
Edit: It looks like the local pharmacy may offer free shipping, so I’ll get in touch with them when they are open tomorrow and see what their dispensing fees are like so I can compare. This might be the best option, and it’s independently owned. 👍
Shoppers treats their pharmacists like they’re robots, and worse, pressures them to upsell services that customers don’t need, and cheat on billing. They give the pharmacists low budgets and make it hard to hire staff,and thus the staff are overworked. Every good pharmacist I’ve ever known at a shoppers has left and started their own pharmacy.
Personally, I’ve directly found my local Shoppers pharmacy wasn’t pleasant, with rude treatment, and not taking time to listen to my concerns or questions. Plus Shoppers is the most expensive place by far (except maybe 7-eleven) to buy almost anything that isn’t steeply discounted on sale, and their dispensing fees specifically are super high.
I can see your predicament but I would try the small pharmacy. You might end up appreciating the more personal touch and taking the sacrifice of the less convenient hours. Even better, try talking to the pharmacist about it. They might even have a way to accommodate you. It I find I only need to go to the actual pharmacy now for pickups, but even then I like talking to my pharmacist so I’ll walk over. (I’m fortunate to have many many options in walking distance.)
Note that I’m not even totally anti-Loblaw. I will go out of my way to walk to No Frills to get the lower-priced No Name products and other (on sale, usually) deals. And I find the staff at No Frills to be super friendly and helpful.
I just really don’t like the shoppers pharmacy and would highly recommend avoiding it.
Continuing your point, for alternatives that are not Loblaws owned, there’s:
for Canadian owned and operated chains of pharmacies. There are definitely many independent ones under other logos and brands, and some other ones outside the provinces I’m familiar with.